A Voice For the Voiceless

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The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Ash Kosiewicz and the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (EPAF)

Ash Kosiewicz is a graduate student pursuing a master's degree in Latin American studies from Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

His concentration is political economy, with a specific focus on health and human rights. Ash graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2002 with a dual degree in government and journalism.

After graduation, he worked for two years as a child support officer with the Texas Office of the Attorney General. In 2004, he moved to Ecuador, where he lived for 10 months working with a local foundation in Guayaquil to raise funds for a health center project in the rural canton of Santa Lucia. Upon returning from Ecuador, he worked for two years as communicators director with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, the third – largest provider of free civil legal aid services to the poor in the United States.

Ash is traveling to Lima to work with the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense – EPAF), a Peruvian NGO that applies forensic anthropology and archeology to search for, recover, and identify individuals forcibly disappeared during Peru's internal political conflict from 1982-2000. Many families watched as their family members – often erroneously suspected of being members of the Maoist insurgent group Shining Path that had declared war on the Peruvian state – were taken away by the Peruvian military and never heard from again. In August 2003, the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation estimated that approximately 70,000 Peruvians were killed at the hands of Shining Path and the Peruvian state, additionally reporting that 8,500 persons were forcibly disappeared by the Peruvian military. Since 2001, EPAF has recovered the burial remains of almost 13,000 forcibly disappeared persons, surpassing the commission's findings and speculating that still more have yet to be recovered.

The extradition of former Peruvian President Alberto K. Fujimori from Chile to Peru in September 2007 to stand trial for widespread human rights abuses during this period has now reopened for many Peruvians the dark history of Peru's 20-year internal war. As high level state officials come forward to give testimony to the presiding tribunal during his currently on-going trial, new information from the trial raises important questions. What impact will the Fujimori trial have on investigations into Peru's recent past? Do human rights organizations and NGOs like EPAF within Peru believe the Fujimori trial will have a positive effect on the fight for human rights?

Ash's work and research will consider the impact of the Fujimori trial on efforts to seek retributive and restorative justice for families who suffered the loss of their loved ones during Peru's internal political conflict.

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